


All Along

by ThatAj



Series: Exposure: One Step at a Time [21]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Nightmares, POV First Person, POV Outsider, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 11:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18690727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAj/pseuds/ThatAj
Summary: I’m not going to lie. I’ve imagined many times how different things would be if Brian’s trick that night had been just a little better at blow jobs.Michael and Justin go to Comic-Con and things are revealed.But you are life I needed all alongI think of you as my brotherAlthough that sounds dumbFutile Devices, Sufjan Stevens, 2010 (yes released three years after this takes place but it’s all pretend anyway, right?)





	All Along

**Author's Note:**

> So Michael’s POV, huh. I don’t know what happened but it just worked better for where I wanted to go with this. Let me know what you think?

Justin Taylor. Justin  _ Sunshine _ Taylor. I’m not going to lie. I’ve imagined many times how different things would be if Brian’s trick that night had been just a little better at blow jobs. My best friend would certainly not be living all the way across the damn country in California. What’s so terrible about Pittsburgh? It’s good enough for the rest of us! 

But then I wouldn’t be here in San Diego for a panel on representation in comics and graphic novels at Comic-freaking-Con. Oh yeah, living out my childhood fantasy like it’s no big deal. 

_ Representation in Comics and Graphic Novels _ . Sounds like something from one of those academic conferences Ben is always going to. And speaking of Ben. I wouldn’t have him either. Not only because I wouldn’t have Red Cape if it hadn’t been for Justin but also because I don’t think I would have been open to a relationship with someone. A real relationship - not whatever fantasy dragged me across the country following Dr. Dave where I was little more than an accessory to him. My crush on Brian survived that mess of a relationship easily. But seeing Brian and Justin together - especially after the bashing - well it’s like they say, don’t meet your heroes. I had some fantasy concocted about what being in a relationship with Brian would be like. I know, I know, I live in a fantasy world. But I’m making a living from it so HA. But seeing them together, well it’s like meeting your superhero and realizing they’re really just a messy person. And I don’t think I could deal with Brian’s mess the way Justin does. I mean I come from a family where every-fucking-thing is spelled out and said aloud, good, bad, and ugly. It’s just put out there and dealt with. And my husband, he’s an English professor, so talk about spelling everything out. And seeing the way Brian and Justin function - they didn’t even speak on the phone today! Words matter too much to me. I don’t like to be guessing. I’m not exactly good with nuance. 

And I can admit it probably looked like I wanted to be with Brian long after I realized we would crash and burn as a couple. I’ve not always been the nicest to Justin. But, in my defense, my best friend was hurt. And it takes a lot to hurt Brian. I’ve seen him after being beat within an inch of his life by his dad and never saw the kind of hurt in his eyes that I saw Justin put there. 

Sure it’s not like Brian never hurt Justin either but was always easier to be forgiving of him, he was here first. And I certainly did not lack for practice when it came to forgiving Brian. 

But here we were. Justin was my business partner and friend and he and Brian were legal domestic partners. 

Oh yeah that. 

They definitely told no one but you know how it goes. Jennifer mentioned something off-hand to my mom who definitely called me up right away to ask if I knew (and if so how dare I keep something like that from her) and, of course, I didn’t. We had seen them at Christmas and no one mentioned anything and I had seen Brian since as he traveled to Pittsburgh a lot that winter and spring for some big account. He mentioned they had gotten a cat but not that they had gotten practically married. I think Jennifer only knew because she called when they were on their way to the notary or whatever. Justin didn’t mention anything the entire time we were in San Diego either. I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. 

I had flown to San Diego and Justin had driven. We were both going to drive back to LA together. I was going to spend a few days in LA to see Brian before flying back to Pittsburgh. Justin had just recently gotten his license back after his seizure in November and was excited to drive. It was probably going to be the longest time we had ever spent alone together and I was a little apprehensive about how awkward it might be. 

We were on the panel - which was so cool! And then we had a booth where we signed copies of Rage and sold merchandise. Justin had to limit the number of courses he was taking on campus the semester before and had done an independent study focusing on Rage so we had been more productive than we had been in quite a while. It was nice to see him after being in contact virtually so often and for so long. My fears about it being awkward were unfounded, at least while we were at the con. He looked good. I mean, he always looks good, it’s not like I didn’t get why Brian wanted him that first night. But since moving to California, he had seemed brighter, happier, more like the Justin I remembered meeting. 

It was wild to see people dressed up like Rage and Zephyr and even one guy dressed up like JT and said he used drag queen padding to give him the correct bubble butt! Justin took a lot of photos to share with Brian. Quinn stopped by the booth and I got to meet someone, other than Justin, who had worked on the movie and really believed in the vision. It was kind of weird, in a way, to meet someone who was friends with Brian and Justin but not one of us. 

I called home to check in with Ben before dinner since due to the time difference, it would be too late later. It was weird being the one out of town. He told me Ma smacked him upside the head at the diner during lunch and told him to tell me to call her. I didn’t. 

Because Justin had his Jeep, we were able to leave the convention area for dinner and went in search of authentic Mexican food, since we were so close to the border. Quinn, who had grown up in Southern California and attended ComicCon for years, recommended a small hole-in-the-wall in downtown San Diego. It was dark and cheap and the dishes were enormous. Definitely the type of place Justin and I would enjoy and Brian would enjoying smirking at us over. We joked about Brian but he also wasn’t the focus of our conversation over our dinner and plenty of housemade sangria. I caught Justin up on all the gossip from Pittsburgh, such that it was. Ted and Blake’s search for the perfect house and their upcoming commitment ceremony. Emmett and Drew’s on-again-off-again relationship that seemed to fluctuate with whether it was football season or not. I shared all the pictures of JR and Hunter until I saw his eyes start to glaze over. I get it, no one’s kids are as interesting to someone else as they are to you. Although my kids are more interesting than anyone else’s, what can I say? 

I got to hear more about Justin’s animation program than I had when he was home for Christmas and everyone’s attention was divided about nine different ways. I had seen how much his drawing had improved over the course of the year - I was his supervisor for his independent study after all! Not that it wasn’t always amazing, but it definitely got more refined and he was really learning how to convey his personal style. He talked about his professional goals and how getting to know Quinn, someone with the degree Justin was earning and already in the field, was helpful. I hadn’t realized that Quinn did storyboards for one of my favorite animated shows. I think Justin purposely didn’t tell me until after we met to avoid being embarrassed by me asking for an autograph or a photo or something. As if I haven’t been going to comic book conventions since before Justin was born. I know how to behave! 

We had talked about going to a club in Hillcrest after dinner but we were both exhausted from having to smile and be “on” for the fans all day and we decided to pick up ice cream and just go to the hotel and watch movies. We found the latest Marvel movie on HBO and since we had both seen it, it was perfect for us to rip to shreds and talk about how Rage would have been better. We were both past exhaustion and slap-happy by the time the movie was done and we dragged ourselves to bed. I couldn’t remember laughing that much anytime recently.  

JR was not yet sleeping through the night so I was plenty used to be woken up by a crying child. I guess that I would have thought that would have been the same as, similar to, or I don’t know prepared me for being shocked awake by Justin screaming in the room next door in this ridiculous two bedroom suite Brian insisted on paying for. Well I guess that it would have been even louder if we were in a regular room liked I had planned.

I bolted from my bed and went running into Justin’s room. Acting without thinking. I came to an abrupt halt at the foot of his bed because...I thought I had heard something about not waking up someone in a nightmare. Or was that sleepwalking? But the way he was screaming and crying, I decided to just wake him up since I didn’t want anyone to call security. I don’t know how they handled it at the loft when this was happening. Brian had mentioned, sometime after Justin had gone to live with him, that Justin had nightmares sometimes. That’s what he said “Justin has nightmares sometimes” in that bored, in passing way he has. Well, here we are six years later and apparently Justin still has nightmares sometimes. 

“Justin,” I whispered. Why the fuck was I whispering if he wasn’t waking himself up with his screaming? I ran my hand lightly up and down his arm. “Justin,” I said more loudly. “JUSTIN!” And I shook his arm. He startled awake and scrambled to the other side of the bed, panting and looking away. I knelt by the bed and whispered, “Justin, Justin, it’s okay. It’s just me.” He nodded, still avoiding eye contact. He grabbed at one of the many prescription bottles lining the bedside table that I hadn’t noticed until that point. 

“Water?” His voice was hoarse. I hurried to the bathroom and filled one of the glasses with tap water, feeling like the situation was too urgent to go scrounging through the mini-bar for bottled water. When I got back to the bed, Justin’s hand was shaking as he tried to unscrew the cap, even though it was one of the non-childproof kinds. I held out the water and my empty hand and we traded. I unscrewed the cap and glanced at him, “One?” He nodded and I tipped a tablet into my palm then into his waiting hand. Such a small pill looked wholly insufficient, like we had brought a garden hose to battle a fire-breathing dragon. 

“Sit with me a minute?” He looked so young just then in this big bed, his hair fluffy and standing up a bit with static electricity. I’ve seen Brian and Justin practically having sex  but there was something more vulnerable, more intimate about seeing Justin like this. Brian did a lot when they lived in Pittsburgh to prevent us from seeing how fucked up Justin was after the bashing and then when he was depressed after Rage got cancelled. I mean I saw a little at Woody’s that time and here and there around the diner but Brian really managed the whole thing, like it was one of his ad campaigns. And let’s be honest, I wasn’t going to push, I was wrapped up in my own stuff each time. And I never knew why Brian did it - was he embarrassed by Justin?

“Sorry about this, Michael. Sorry to wake you up,” Justin said, hoarsely. 

I shrugged, what was there to say to that? “I can say I’ve never been woken up quite like that before. But I’m sure it’s worse for you.”

He shrugged back. “In a way. It’s usually not that bad.”

“Sleeping in a strange place can be difficult.” I knew I had more trouble sleeping whenever I was without Ben. There’s something just comforting about the weight of a familiar body next to you. 

Justin tilted his head and looked at me from under where his hair had fallen in his face. “Well yeah that too I guess… Brian always wakes me up before it gets that bad.”

“He does?”

He sighed heavily, “Yeah he complains that he’s not had a decent night’s sleep in years.” He smiled tentatively. “All those all-nighters at Babylon were good training for his broken boyfriend.” 

“You’re not broken,” I said reflexively. 

He smiled gently. “I am. Kinda. But it’s okay.” He really seemed sort of, at peace with that? Like he wasn’t putting himself down. I remembered Ben telling me about some Japanese philosophy about the beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and incompleteness. 

I tried again. “He does worry about you, you know.”

“Jesus, Michael,” he huffed. “I’m not seventeen, eighteen anymore.”

“True.” I remembered how insecure he used to be about Brian and it was hard to believe that had changed because I couldn’t imagine what had changed between them or within them. 

“Also…” He began. “Nevermind.”

“No, what?”

“He worries, mostly, I think, because he can’t understand,” he began. “He’s  _ understanding. _ God, you would be surprised.” He was right, I was surprised. “But he can’t fix it and he can’t understand how it feels. So he worries. I think he would worry less if he understood like on a lived level. But I also wouldn’t wish that on him.” 

I guess I know something about being on the outside of something, about being worried about something you can’t really understand. But, can’t Brian understand?

“Justin, don’t you think Brian knows what it’s like to feel hopeless?”

“Huh? What? Like sure everyone does Michael, but not like...I mean that’s like comparing the flu to…”

“No! That’s not what I meant.” God that’s not what I meant at all. “I meant...what happened after my going away party when I went to the loft to confront him, you know, because Brian hadn’t shown up. As usual.”

A look of confusion came over his face as he tilted his head to look at me and squinted his eyes. “Michael, I don’t remember anything in the week leading up to my prom. I - the last memory I have is asking Brian to prom.” Oh. I hadn’t realized that. And I can’t imagine Brian turned him down with any kindness. And that’s the last memory he has. 

I thought, I don’t know how to do this. I began to understand this fortress Brian tries to create around Justin. It’s not embarrassment. 

“So, Emmett threw us a going away party. The night before your prom. It was lumberjack themed. Everyone wore flannel. It was for me and...David.” It felt weird saying his name after all these years. “You were there.” And that felt even weirder. “And Brian didn’t show up. As usual. And I was pissed because it was finally something I was doing, I was doing first. He had the career, the guys, the looks, but I had this thing, you know? And I felt like he was being this selfish prick who couldn’t be happy for me.”

“Selfish prick, you sound like your mom.”

“Yeah, I guess I do….So I stormed into the loft, to tell him off, you know? And I find him…” I trailed off because how do you say this? My voice broke as I tried to find a toehold. “He had this white scarf…”

“The one he wore to my prom?”

He knew about that? “You remember that?”   
“No...after he wore it under his clothes like some fucking...albatross.”

“A what?...Nevermind.” I remembered sitting for three days besides Brian, that scarf dangling from his fingers as casually as he might hold a cigarette or beer bottle, trying not to think too closely about the fact that was Justin’s blood soaked through it. I remembered peeping a glance at Brian as he changed, just after I returned from Portland, wondering if his refusal to visit Justin in the hospital meant that this whateveritwas was over and maybe just maybe, only to realize that his refusal to visit was laden with more meaning than all the mylar balloons and get well soon cards could ever be. “Yeah so that scarf. He was, uh, hanging?”

“Hanging?” Justin’s voice came out in a squeak. His eyes grew glassy with tears. 

“Fuck. Shit. I’m sorry Justin, I shouldn’t have - “ Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I didn’t even know how we had gotten on this story. What path had brought us from Justin’s nightmare to the time Brian tried to hang himself? I looked down at the bedspread. 

“Don’t you fucking dare.” His face flushed. “You can’t fucking...fucking say that and then...just keep going. Please.”

“Uh, oh fuck, okay.” I took a deep breath. “His pants were down, you know? And he was...uh, jacking off. I rushed over when I saw what was happening and got him down.”

“And?”

“And? And he said he was just trying scarfing! That the risk of hanging was okay, better to die young and beautiful. Or some such shit.”

“Did you maybe think he just wanted to try autoerotic asphyxiation?” Justin suggested, hopefully.

“I mean, sure, it’s possible.  _ Anything _ is possible with Brian,” I said carefully. “But he had just lost that job in New York to someone younger, he turned thirty, and… well, you don’t remember the party, huh?”

Justin sighed, “No. But I’ve seen pictures and heard about it...the death day party, the casket…And you were moving across the country.”

“Well I don’t think that…”

“It’s a lot of loss he was facing.”

“It was.”

“So you think he...attempted suicide?” He looked at me with owl eyes.    
“I don’t know. I really don’t. But that’s a fucking gesture if I’ve ever seen one.”  

His eyes got even bigger, which I didn’t realize was possible, and those tears started to creep out the corners. “Did I - did I know?”

I raised my hand up and brushed his cheek before realizing that was a total Debbie move and I swore I would never turn into Ma. Dropping my hand, I said as kindly as I could, “I don’t know. I - I don’t know if Brian ever told anyone.” Because who knows what they talk about together. Maybe Brian called him up right away and confessed...it seems unlikely but then again we’ll be talking and Justin will reference something from Brian’s childhood and I guess that means they’ve talked about it, right? 

Justin started breathing heavily again and his hand found mine and he held on hard. “I want to call him. Can I call him?” He asked in a small voice. And I was reminded again that I hadn’t seen them actually talk today, just exchange text messages. 

Justin stared at me until I realized I was in his room, sitting on his bed. I stood up. “I’ll just be in the other room.” As though there were multiple places I might go at 3 AM in a strange city.

I sat on the couch in the common area of the suite and when I heard Justin’s voice break as he said, “Brian?” I went into my room and dropped onto the bed. I texted Ben - with the time difference he would be getting up to get to the gym before a day of classes and meetings. I just let him know Justin had a rough night and we would probably be sleeping in and I would call him later. I thought back to what was it, two and half, three years ago now? When it was exactly that I learned that Justin was depressed.

I remember when he came back from Los Angeles and was in a fucking mood all the time. And I got it, to a certain extent, our dreams of Rage the movie had been crushed and I was bummed too! But a dream is just that. And was life in Pittsburgh so bad to come back to? Was working on Rage  _ the comic book _ that terrible compared with the movie? It just seemed so....self-centered and, honestly, immature. And then we heard he had been sick and, of course, my mind goes to worst case scenario. What? I’m half Italian and half drag queen and I have a positive husband and kid. But Ben corrected me and told me it must have been depression and he recognized it from how he felt just after he was diagnosed. He also told me that he thought Justin must have been hospitalized for a few days because at one point he had gone totally off the radar and it wasn’t a cold or something because Justin would’ve just said it was a cold. And if he was hospitalized for depression, I figured out for myself he must have been suicidal because no way was Brian letting him going into the hospital, not  _ that _ hospital, for anything less than life or death. 

I know enough to know that depression isn’t someone’s choice but my reaction has always been - and I haven’t said this to anyone because I know how it sounds, I know, okay? - wow he really took this Rage thing hard. After everything the kid had been through and put up with, this is the thing that breaks him? And I understood why Brian was willing to move to LA. I mean he almost lost him once, right? If having to leave LA and the movie business made him so depressed he was suicidal, well moving was the right thing to do. 

I must have drifted off because I was startled awake by my phone ringing. I thought it was Ben, calling in response to my texts and answered the phone without looking. 

“Hey,” I said trying to sound sexy but coming out just really fucking tired. 

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Brian’s voice snapped through the earpiece. 

“I - “ I scrambled. Of course he had called the second he hung up with Justin. I listened for Justin but didn’t hear anything. 

“The kid wakes up from a nightmare and you what? Decide a nice little fairy tale is what he needs to lull him back to sleep?” It had been a long time since I had heard Brian this angry. 

“Well - “

“He gets nightmares Michael.”

“I see that, I - “

“Because he was fucking - ”

“Brian, I - “

“And you think telling him about finding me hanging the night before that .... is going to what Michael? What that fuck were you thinking?”

“I guess I wasn’t. Not clearly. He was asking me about what it’s like to have a partner who - “ I’m not sure why I pausd there, whether it was due to what I was about to say or because I had called Brian Justin’s partner. 

“A partner who, what, Mikey?”

“Whom you’re worried about, who’s having an experience you will never fully understand. Like Ben with HIV, or you with cancer. And then I said…” I paused. “That you’re worried about him - of course! But that maybe you could understand what it’s like to be suicidal.”

“Because you found me hanging.”

“I thought he knew.”

The pause that followed I thought was going to precede some big denial by Brian that he was ever suicidal, like he had made that night. 

“Mikey, he’s not suicidal.” Brian whispered as though he was telling me a secret. I mean if my partner had been suicidal and wasn’t anymore, I’d be shouting it from the goddamn rooftops. “He never was.”

“Huh?”

There was a pause. “So how are you doing, Michael?” Brian said in that casual smarmy way he has that communicates the discussion is closed. 

“Uhhh,” I spluttered.

“Convention going well? Having fun?”

“Sure, sure. It’s a great time. It’s just…” I yawned. 

“It’s just what?”

“It was quite a shock to hear him...like that.” I rubbed my eyes. “He said you usually wake him up before it gets that bad.”

“Yeah learned that one pretty quickly. I like the kid screaming in my bed, but not like that.” 

“I’m sorry, that’s exhausting, huh?”

“You’re sorry about the wrong thing here.”

I thought for a minute. It was three in the morning, my brain wasn’t fully online. “You’re right. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No you weren’t. Okay, I’m exhausted. Good-bye Mikey.”

“Bye Brian.” 

“Oh Mikey?” This is how it always happens, a request for help comes seemingly as an afterthought. 

“Yeah?”

“It can be hard for him to fall back asleep.”

“Hmmhmm.” That made sense.

“Especially alone, in a new place.”

“You want me...you want me to sleep with him?” 

“I’m paying for a king size suite. Don’t tell me they fucked it up.”

“No, no king size beds in both rooms.”

“Okay then.”

“Okay then.”

“Later Mikey.”

“Bye Brian.” 

Once I hit “end” on the call, I shuffled over to Justin’s bedroom, not sure how to broach this without it being really fucking awkward. He must have heard me and looked up to the doorway and gave me a sheepish smile. “So Brian gave us his blessing this time?”

“I guess.” I grinned at him and sat down on the bed and swung my legs up. 

“Okay then.” He fluffed his pillow and laid back. I reached over and slung my arm across his chest. He smelled like baby shampoo and chamomile. I closed my eyes and drifted back off. 

I woke up in the morning before Justin - he’s never been a morning person - and got up to use the bathroom. When I was done, I stood in the doorway to the bedroom for a minute and looked at Justin. He was rolled up in the comforter, like a burrito, strands of blonde hair sticking out from the top, and he was snoring these light snuffling snores. I thought of Brian waking up to this every morning. 

Once we checked out from the hotel, we drove up to LA, eating ourselves sick on candy. I couldn’t let go of what Brian had said last night, or early this morning, whatever. I kept turning it over and over in my mind and trying to make it make sense with what I already knew. 

The CD we were listening to came to an end and made a whirring noise as it spun around to start at track one again. Justin wrinkled his nose and shook his head and I leaned over to eject it. Instead of putting in another CD, I took a deep breath and asked, “Uhh, so when were talking last night? This morning. About Brian?”

“Yeah?”

“And then I spoke to Brian?”

“Michael I’m familiar with the course of events...do you have a point?”

“Uh, yeah, so Brian said you were never suicidal?”

He began twisting the hair at the nape of his neck. “Yeah Michael, I wasn’t suicidal. I have OCD...well and PTSD. And depression. But yeah I was never actually suicidal.”

“Oh...but….” I didn’t know how to ask what I wanted to know.

“I was misdiagnosed. Back in Pittsburgh. I was have intrusive thoughts of hurting myself or someone else but I didn’t actually want to. That’s OCD.” 

“Oh. Well, I’m glad….not that I’m glad glad about the OCD, and yeah, the PTSD, which I guess I knew about, but I’m happy you’re not suicidal. Or you weren’t.”

“Uh thanks, Mikey.” 

Oh. I guess I had assumed, Rage got cancelled, Justin’s dreams of movie stardom were over, and he got depressed and suicidal and convinced Brian to move to LA so he could go back to pursuing this dream. I mean it all made sense in a very basic way. And, like I said, I’m not good with nuance. 

Wait that still left.... “So why did you move to LA then?” I asked.

Justin sighed and rolled his eyes. “A lot of reasons probably,” he said as he waved his hand vaguely around. “Kinnetik expanding, the animation program…” I looked at him longer and he glanced at me and then back at the freeway. “I don’t know Michael, this is a question for Brian.”

“But it was your decision too. It’s not like you just do what he says.” I had known them long enough to be disabused of that belief. If Justin hadn’t wanted to move to LA, they wouldn’t be here. Plain and simple. 

“Noooo. But I still think this is a question that you need to ask Brian.”

“Like I’m ever going to get a real answer from him.”

“That’s a you and Brian problem.” 

I dropped my head back against the headrest while Justin shuffled through his CDs, while keeping one eye on the road, and popped a CD in the player. I thought about a metaphor Ben once used about how it’s necessary to clear some plants - not necessarily just weeds, but the plants you want to grow - in order to allow enough room for the ones remaining to thrive. And how bigger plants, need more space. And not to beat this thing to death, but Brian is a bigger plant if there ever was one. 

About an hour later, Justin pulled the Jeep up a short driveway and under what he called a “carport,” just a roof and wall jutting out from the house, like an open-ended garage which I guess serves just fine in a climate without snow. It’s not like I don’t see the appeal of LA over Pittsburgh. Justin parked and shut off the engine and more or less bounced from the car to the door, a grin threatening to split his face in two. 

The benefit to having a house that was entirely made of glass - and I shuddered to think what pornographic shows the neighbors had been privy to - was that we could see Brian puttering around, straightening magazines, fluffing throw pillows. It’s not like he didn’t know we were going to be back, I had texted him when Justin said we were about fifteen minutes away. Brian fluffling throw pillows was about the most telling sign that he was anxious to see Justin than if he had been peering out the windows visibly waiting for us, which is what I do when Ben’s coming home and I haven’t seen him in days. I don’t know that just seems like a normal reaction. I hoped Justin knew that Brian was excited to see him and I turned to say something but Justin’s grin stretched even wider and he rushed to unlock the door and I saw him wrap his arms around Brian from behind and Brian’s whole body relaxed as he turned around. I walked in behind Justin and looked everywhere but them as they started to make out like teenagers. I took in the house and how it was decorated. A tubby one-eyed cat weaved in and out between my legs, pausing here and there to rub its mouth against my pants. The house was very modern looking - all that glass and downstairs and upstairs forming a t-shape rather than a regular rectangle like any other house. I was surprised that it was decorated with warm pops of color and not just from Justin’s paintings on the interior walls and above the fireplace. The sofa was a burnt orange woven fabric and there were chairs upholstered in the same fabric but light blue. Instead of the industrial steel and chrome and white I had come to associate with Brian, the dining room table and chairs at the ends were a warm honey-colored wood with coordinated benches on either side. In front of the fireplace there were leather chairs that looked like baseball mitts and matching ottomans.  It was all still a place I could picture Brian, just in a different key. This must be Justin’s influence, I thought. And in that moment I realized I had never really seen, or known, his style. When had he ever decorated his own place? Even when he moved into the loft, that had really just been his clothes and I never thought much about it. But even over the years, the loft remained looking very much the same - even as Brian might replace a coffee table or sofa because, well, he likes to buy things and keep his look up-to-date - and I guess I assumed Justin must have the same taste. Although even that’s not entirely true. I really never gave it much thought. Even as I demanded my partners create space for me in their homes, or I created space for them in mine, and allow our tastes and interests to mix together and create a joint home, I never considered that Justin hadn’t had the same experience. This was the first time I had really seen a home that was truly Justin’s as much as it was anybody else’s. 

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah. I have some more ideas for this 'verse but if you have any ideas let me know!


End file.
